God as Abba Father

Posted by stpauls on July 17, 2011 under Sermons |

[This sermon was written by Presiding Priest Ruth Monette and delivered on July 17, 2011.]

We start this morning in Romans where we left off last week and I want to start this morning’s reflections with a point I made last week. Again we see Paul using the terms flesh and spirit as if they are opposites. And again, I say to you, Paul’s dualism between flesh and spirit is not as simple as “flesh, bad; spirit, good.” If I may be forgiven for putting words into Paul’s mouth – the relationship he seems to be setting up here more closely matches the idea of the Kingdom of God in place of the kingdoms of this world. Paul wants his readers – the early church in Rome; perhaps we would include ourselves – to place their hearts and minds on God’s kingdom, the realm of the Spirit (capital S) and not on the kingdoms of this world, concerned only with this life.

To build up those arguments and help the Romans understand the relationship they have come into with God, Paul gives some really lovely imagery this morning in the midst of his run-on sentences and spiralling arguments. Especially:

“When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God…”

and

“We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now.”

Both of those reflect Paul’s ability to take an idea and some language from his own traditions and weave it into the new argument he is building – being both affirming of the tradition and transforming it.

Those two images of God as Abba and of creating groaning in labour pains reflect how Paul suggests we relate to God once we have Christ in our hearts and minds. So I would like to explore them a little.

First, there is the image of God as an adoptive parent, of Abba Father. Scholars note that the combination of those two words – the transliteration of the Aramaic Abba and the Greek translation of it – appear in ways that suggest Jesus might historically have called God Abba. And that doing so might have become a practice of his early followers. It is an intimate term – almost Daddy. From the perspective of an adoptive parent to be called “dad” (or “mum” as the case may be) is often a long-waited and deeply hoped for moment. And for many of the more than a thousand children waiting for adoption in BC, it can be a moment of incredible trust. Trust that this adult is really sticking around. Trust that this adult is going to be the parent that is longed for and needed.

When Paul – drawing on Jesus’ own words – describes our relationship with God as adopted children and Abba Father, he is inviting us to an intimate, compassionate relationship. I want to come back and say a few more things about this, but I want to do that in light of the second image I am lifting up from this morning’s snippet of Romans: creation groaning in labour pains, waiting for the birth of redemption.

Here, Paul implies God might be both creation giving birth to redemption and the midwife to creation as she gives birth. Certainly, Christians seem to be invited to stand by as witness and assistant in this process of redemption. The image, of course, calls to mind mothers – a nice parallel to God as Father just a few lines above.

In that way, both these images set us into a kind of parent/child relationship with God who is our Father and Mother, the one who through the Spirit adopts us into a new life and births us into a new life.

This parental language became widely used within the Church – so widely that from time to time we make the mistake of thinking that our language for God is God. Perhaps we would fall into that trap less if we only used similes and not so many metaphors when speaking of God. For the non-English geeks amongst you, that would mean we restricted ourselves to saying “God is like our father” instead of “God is our father.” Perhaps then we would be able to remember that no terms we use to speak of God will fully grasp or pin down the Divine.

Because the language of God as our Father has so permeated the church, we sometimes launch into without any background – we do it in liturgy all the time – our texts do it even more frequently than your clergy who will slid gender-neutral language in where our tradition still relies on Father. Partly we do this because no one metaphor is enough – we know we need more ways to speak of God, not fewer. Partly we do this because to hear God spoke of as Father can require some working through our of own complicated relationships with fathers. God is, of course, held up not as a carbon copy of any particular father, but as an ideal father. As a father whose love is unconditional, whose boundaries are clearly set, whose cheerleading for his children is matched with regular prods to be all that they can be – which may or may not be the kind of father an unhappy or fatherless child dreams of.

We don’t simply abandon the imagery of God as parent to us in part because – despite the complications – the image still speaks to us. It still offers us a glimpse of the relationship God is longing to have with us – a relationship of intimacy, of love. A relationship that empowers us to grow into our full selves.

The adoption community today talks often about openness in adoption. On one level they are advocating for a “no secrets” approach to adoption – honesty about how a child comes into a family. On a second level they are advocating for multiplied relationships, keeping kids in relationship with as many family members as are safe. This means that in many of today’s adoptions – especially ones facilitated by the Ministry of Children and Families – an adoptive parent gains not only a son or daughter but also that child’s grandparent, aunt, uncle, cousin, sometimes even a birth father or mother. Not all of those relationships will be maintained with visits and in-person contact, but even so… Adoptions today generally mean family trees and family reunions are larger and more complicated.

And more joyful. As we reflect on Paul’s invitation that we call God “Abba, Father” just as Jesus did, one of the realities we might take from that is that doing so invites us into a large, complicated family. Our cries join the cries of our brothers and sisters in faith – all of us seeking and receiving welcome to an intimate, compassionate relationship with God as Mother and Father who through the Spirit adopts us into new life and births us into new life.

Amen.